Once again he felt the searing touch.
In an instant the pain in his wrist and shoulder were gone.
In the sudden silence Ted Conway fell into sleep. But just before he surrendered to blankness, he knew that something inside him had changed.
Nothing, he knew, would ever be the same again.
CHAPTER 13
Jared?" The sound faded into the silence that surrounded him. At first Jared wasn't really sure he'd heard someone calling his name. But then it came again, faint, barely audible. "Jared!"
His father's voice.
Though he could barely hear it, Jared recognized it immediately, rasping with the anger that was always there, even when his father was sober.
Was he sober now?
Jared couldn't tell.
Then the voice came again, and this time it carried a note of command. "Jared!"
He sounded nearer now, and Jared tensed. His eyes flicked first one way then the other, trying to catch a glimpse of his father. But he saw nothing. Then, as his father called out to him yet again, Jared realized he was lost. But that was crazy-he knew exactly where he was: in the big house in St. Albans, in his room on the second floor. Except now he wasn't. He was in a room-a big room-but there was nothing in it. No furniture, no carpets, nothing hanging on the walls. One of the walls, though, was pierced by two windows. Jared moved close enough to the glass to look out.
Nothing.
It was as if a thick fog had fallen beyond the window, and when he tried to peer into it, his eyes found nothing to focus on. A weird disorientation fell over him, causing him to lose his balance. Staggering, he instinctively reached out to steady himself against the window frame.
His right hand plunged through it, disappearing into the gray morass beyond the boundaries of the room. Jared froze in shock.
He jerked his arm back, and for a single terrible instant thought his hand was gone. But no! It was there, and it didn't hurt, and-
What the hell had happened?
For several long seconds he stood perfectly still, his eyes fixed on the spot where his hand had disappeared. Then, as if drawn by some unseen force, his hand started moving once again toward the same spot.
"No!"
The word jabbed his consciousness like the stinger of a hornet, and Jared jerked back to life. He sprung around, certain his father was standing right behind him. The room was still empty.
He whirled around again. Now the gray fog beyond the window had vanished. Instead there was a blackness that seemed to go on for all eternity. But it was a blackness that was not empty.
As he gazed into it, his heart pounding, he felt something reaching out to him.
Something that wanted to touch his soul.
A strangled cry rising in his throat, Jared backed away from the window, then turned and fled through the room's single door.
He found himself in a corridor, a long, broad passage that seemed to stretch on forever in both directions. He looked one way, then the other. Which way should he go? Panic began to rise in him. One way looked exactly like the other.
But he had to make up his mi-
He stopped.
Something was close to him. Very close.
He held his breath, listening.
Silence.
Yet it was there. He could feel it; it was edging closer.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and a shiver passed through him.
Behind him! It was behind him, and now he could almost feel its touch.
If it touched him, he would die.
Die, and disappear forever into the terrible blackness he'd glimpsed beyond the window.
Then, once more, he heard his father calling to him. This time Jared followed the voice, racing down the hall, for a moment certain he'd escaped.
Then he felt it again. Still there-the unseen thing that had emerged from the darkness beyond the window crept across the room and reached out to him.
It was behind him again.
He tried to run faster, but no matter how fast he ran, or how far, the passageway stretched endlessly away. Then it forked, and forked again, and again Jared felt a surge of hope. He turned and started down a new corridor. Abruptly, out of nowhere, his way was blocked.
Sister Clarence, pointing at him accusingly, her eyes flashing with daggers of fury.
Turning back, Jared ran in the other direction.
But this time Father MacNeill blocked his path, screaming curses at him and holding a crucifix high, as if trying to ward off the Devil himself.
He whirled again, but now a huge black man, grinning wickedly at him, reached out to grasp his throat. Once more Jared spun away and ran. He dodged in one direction or another, but everywhere he turned the nun was waiting for him, or the priest, or the black man who wanted to strangle him.
Then, once more, he heard his father's voice. "This way! Come this way." Again he dodged this way and that, always following his father's voice, his unseen pursuer drawing ever closer. Urged on by his father's voice, Jared ran until finally he could run no longer. Lungs burning, heart pounding, he collapsed to the floor, his breath coming in gasping pants. Terror and exhaustion overwhelmed him, and he began to sob.
Then, through the overpowering fear, he felt the force from the darkness encircle him, grasping and enclosing him in the dark, suffocating despair he was too tired to resist.
Couldn't run.
Couldn't hide.
Couldn't escape.
It was over.
After what might have been a second or an eternity, Jared heard his father's voice once more.
"Open your eyes, Jared."
He obeyed, but saw nothing at all. It was as if he'd been drawn into the blackness beyond the window of the room he'd fled, been sucked so deep into its vortex that no light would ever again penetrate his world. Then, deep in the blackness, twin embers began to glow. At first they were no more than pinpricks of light, but as Jared watched, they grew larger and larger, burning brighter, moving toward him. Slowly, they began to take on form.
Not lights, but eyes.
Glittering, golden eyes, their pupils not round, but slitted. They seemed to be lit from within, and as they drew closer, the light grew bright enough to show him the face from which they peered.
The face was dark, and covered with scales, and from its mouth-an angry gash between the two dripping holes that were its nostrils-a slithering tongue darted forth. As if hypnotized by the terrible visage, Jared remained where he was, immobile.
The face drew closer yet. Now Jared could feel the tongue flick against his cheek, then move across his jaw and down his body.
Everywhere it touched him, it felt as if a razor had sliced his skin. But instead of blood oozing forth from his wounds, an icy chill crept inward.
The tongue kept moving, creeping over every part of him, and slowly the cold took hold, reaching into him through every pore, like the tendrils of some vile plant growing within him. As it spread he knew there was nothing he could do to throw it off. For the first time since the nightmare began, Jared opened his mouth to scream.
But it was too late.
The ice had already captured him, the darkness taken possession of his soul.
It was as if an electric charge had shot through Kim. She jerked awake, her body convulsing, throwing off sleep like a dog shaking water from its coat. "Jared?" she heard herself cry out. "Jared, what's wrong?"
Why did I do that? The question popped into her mind even as the reverberation of her words died away, and for several seconds she sat perfectly still in her dark room, listening.
Nothing.
Nothing, at least, except the sound of an owl hooting in the distance, some insects chirping, the normal creaking of the house, and the comforting ticking of the old-fashioned wind-up alarm clock she kept by her bed.
Nor could she find any remnants of dreams clinging to the corners of her consciousness. One moment she'd been sound asleep, and the next wide-awake. Wide-awake, and worried about Jared.